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Articles
COMMUNITY WITHOUT COERCION
HANNES H. GISSURARSON Pem broke College, Oxford
I n the West, we are witnessing a remarkable regrouping of
political forces. Marxism is seen by more and more people as a pure
fantasy, irrelevant to our time and day, although it will, of
course, linger on for a while in some educational establishments.
But with its decline, we may perhaps be returning to the political
problems that preoccupied pre-Marxian thinkers, in particular the
old tension between conservatism and liberalism. There is one dif-
ference: now, those who call themselves socialists are in fact
conser- vatives, while self-styled conservatives are, at least
sometimes, liberals. In this paper, I propose accordingly to
examine one or two conservative (socialist) arguments against the
market order, not in terms of efficiency, but other values, which,
it is alleged, market supporters cannot take into account. I will
do this with special reference to Hegel, as he seems to inspire
many contemporary non- Marxian critics of capitalism.
The problem with capitalism, as perceived by Hegelians, is this:
if society is to be legitimate, there has to be "universality"; in
other words, a sense of citizenship, of people identifying with the
state. But in capitalism, or as Hegel called it , civil society,'
there is only "particularity"; human relationships are based on
self-interest, on the mutual fulfilling of needs, not on any common
identity. Civil society is a society of strangers. Thus, a sense of
loss, or alienation,
Reason Papers No. 11 (Spring 1986) 3-16. Copyright O 1986 by the
Reason Foundation.
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4 REASON PAPERS NO. 11
is created. Some members of the community do not feel as its
members, they experience the community as something external and
unintelligible. There is, then, a conflict between what Adam Smith
called the "commercial spirit," and ethical community in which man
can fulfill his role as man. It is a conflict between civil society
and the state that can only be overcome by a Hegelian Aufhebung of
civil society into the state. Translated into modern terms, this
means an interventionist state, correcting the outcomes of the
"blind" play of the market forces.
Hegel thought that the unhampered free market had two un-
desirable social consequences. In the first place, the individual
was deprived of the intellectual development that was only possible
within a comm~ni ty .~ Hegel agreed, then, with Adam Ferguson and
Adam Smith, that the division of labor, although on the whole
beneficial, had some undesirable social consequences which, in
turn, meant that the legitimacy of the liberal order was inherently
ques- tionable. Hence, modern Hegelians argue that, despite the
affluence of contemporary capitalist states, they are seething with
discontent. Space does not permit us to provide an adequate
response to their argument. It does not, however, appear as
convincing now as 10 or 15 years ago when the "New Left" was in
fashion.
Let me, however, note four points. First, the problem seems to
be somewhat exaggerated. The intellectual development offered to
the common man in precapitalistic society was not very great.
Second, if the liberal order lacks legitimacy, why do people
everywhere try to move from less to more liberal countries? They go
from Mexico to the United States, from East Germany to West
Germany, and from China to Hong Kong; not the other way around.
Third, the dis- contented group in our societies does not consist
as much of or- dinary citizens as intellectuals who cannot easily
find a market for their "services." Is not the alienation they
describe in such detail their own alienation? Fourth, and this is a
point to which I will return later in this paper, civil society
inay be able to generate the iden- tification, fellow-feeling, and
social monitoring that may be necessary for its maintenance. This
it may achieve through volun- tary associations, different
communities, churches, localities, and the like.
The other undesirable consequence of the unhampered market,
according to Hegel, was that the individual became prey of blind
and uncontrolled market forces in all their unpredictability and
uncer- tainty. Overproduction forced people into poverty, turning
them into "a rabble of paupers,"3 creating alienation again. As
Hegel said:
This inner dialectic of civil society thus drives it-or at any
rate drives a specific civil society-to push beyond its own limits
and seek markets, and so its necessary means of subsistence, in
other lands
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COMMUNITY WITHOUT COERCION 5
which are either deficient in the goods it has overproduced, or
else generally backward in industry, e t ~ . ~
For Hegel, as Michael Oakeshott has remarked, poverty was "the
counterpart of modern wealth rather than a sign of personal inade-
quacy." Hegel was well aware of the fact that poverty had existed
before capitalism, and he was familiar with the classical
economists' argument that capitalism created wealth, not poverty.
His thesis was rather that in the context of progressive society
the existence of poverty was a social problem, whereas in
precapitalistic society it might have been an individual problem.
Poverty was relative rather than absolute; it was the position that
the poor occupied in society. By their membership in a progressive
society the poor had come to form certain expectations which were
legitimate, Hegel believed, but were not f~l f i l led .~
In this paper, I shall concentrate on this argument. First,
there is the idea of poverty as relative deprivation that has to be
relieved by the state. Second, we have the notion that socially
generated expec- tations are legitimate and that the state has,
likewise, to step in and fulfill them. The "inner dialectic" of
civil society consists then, as I understand Hegel and his
followers, in its creation of needs that society is not itself able
to satisfy, so that it is pushed beyond its own limits. The liberal
state-the state as confined to civil society-is not enough. It is,
in the Hegelian scheme, almost a contradiction in terms. Underlying
the argument there is a conception of man as a being who can only
capture his essence in the state, by which Hegel meant an ethical
community, a community of shared ideals and ends. Man is free only
insofar as he is a member of such a commu- nity, participating in
its Sittlichkeit. As a citizen of the state, he has duties toward
his fellow citizens; but he also has rights against them that
transcend the contractual rights of civil society. The welfare
state, with its conception of social justice, is therefore
rational, in- deed inescapable.
Hegel's arguments have recently been restated by communitarian
critics of liberalism. On the right, Roger Scruton, Irving Kristol,
and Sir Ian Gilmour accuse Hayek and other liberals of endorsing
the uncertainty which can only sever the bonds of loyalty between
in- dividual and ~ o c i e t y . ~ Distribution of income has to
have, Kristol contends for example, a meaningful moral content:
otherwise it will always be seen as illegitimate. On the left,
Charles Taylor and Ray- mond Plant argue that liberals have an
impoverished notion of human beings, perceiving them as utilitarian
calculators and therefore unable to provide a satisfactory theory
of their loyalty to society
Let me try to respond to the Hegelian argument on three
levels:
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6 REASON PAPERS NO. 11
historical, philosophical, and economic. On the historical
level, liberals can question the claim that pauperization was a
consequence of capitalism. In the early 1950s, a meeting of the
Mont Pelerin Society was devoted to the treatment of capitalism by
historians, some of the papers being published in a book in 1954,
Capitalism and the Hi~ tor ians .~ There, the authors reach the
conclusion, on the basis of their analysis of the movements of
wages and prices in the 18th and 19th centuries, that there was a
"slow and irregular progress of the working class" during this
period.1° This conclusion has since been reinforced by the research
of Max Hartwell and others.ll
In his introduction to Capitalism and the Historians, Hayek
tries to explain why the opposite view came to be dominant. In the
first place, he contends, there was "evidently an increasing
awareness of facts which before had passed unnoticed. The very
increase of wealth and well-being which had been achieved raised
standards and aspirations. "12 Secondly, and more importantly, the
landowning class had a vested interest in depicting the conditions
in the in- dustrial areas of the North as darkly as possible, in
its political strug- gle with the capitalist class. Finally, most
of the historians who were interested in economic history in the
19th century were sympathetic to socialism or interventionism; they
had certain preconceptions and found ample evidence to support
them, as all historians do who seek out such evidence.
But Hegelians can point out that this does not dispose of their
thesis. They are concerned about relative, not absolute poverty,
and about the resulting estrangement of the poor from society. They
are right. The Hayekian reading of history, if correct, only serves
to change some of their preconceptions, to bring some balance into
the picture, but it does not show that the Hegelian worry is
groundless. Should hard-working, conscientious people risk losing
their jobs or at least suffering worse living standards because of
a change in fashion of a technical innovation in another country?
Are such peo- ple not the victims of circumstances, indeed of
market forces? And, perhaps more importantly: Should whole
communties that have existed for centuries be allowed to go under,
lose their identity, their history, the traditions and social
values that they have developed?
This brings us to the second response, which is philosophical.
It pertains to how people can come to have legitimate expectations.
In his treatment of this problem in Anarchy, State and Utopia,
Robert Nozick asserts that it depends on whether or not the
fulfillment of such expectations requires the violation of the
rights of other people to choose. If some people's expectations
remain unfulfilled simply because other people have chosen things
provided by the former, then those people have no justified
complaint, their expectations
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COMMUNITY WITHOUT COERCION
have not been legitimate. A s Nozick says: Arturo Toscanini,
after conducting the New York Philharmonic Or- chestra, conducted
an orchestra called the Symphony of the Air. That orchestra's
continued functioning in a financially lucrative way depended upon
his being the conductor. If he retired, the other musi- cians would
have to look for another job, and most of them would probably get a
much less desirable one. Since Toscanini's decision as to whether
to retire would affect their livelihood significantly, did all of
the musicians in that orchestra have a right to a say in that
decision?13
A possible Hegelian response to this argument is that these con-
siderations may apply to purely contractual relationships, but that
many social relationships are not contractual. Moreover, Hegelians
may argue that people are interdependent and that the needs of the
poor are shaped by society, or in other words partly by those who
then refuse to accept the goods of the poor. In that sense, the
poor are victimized. Our rejoinder must be this: first, those human
relationships which are interesting from a moral point of view are
voluntary. It is the joint decision of two individuals whether or
not they marry; there is a joint acceptance of you by society and
of society by you, otherwise you emigrate or you lose your
citizenship. If resources are transferred from Norwegian tax-
payers to fisherfolk in the North in order to sustain their commu-
nity, then the Norwegian taxpayers have been deprived of something
without their direct consent. They have lost, while the fisherfolk
have gained. Second, even if it is right that people are in-
terdependent in civil society, it does not follow that they are
equally interdependent. It is precisely their market value, their
price, as agreed in voluntary transactions, which reflects the
dependence of others on them. If they carry a price lower than
expected, it only shows that society is not as dependent upon them
as they had thought. (This is not to say, however, that such people
are worthless in the eyes of society, and hence totally rejected by
it. Everybody can carry a price in Hegel's "system of needs," but
it may be very low. Nozick has an illuminating discussion of this
in his chapter in Anarchy, State, and Utopia on "Self-esteem and
Envy."14)
It is undoubtedly true that by living in a progressive society
people come to have greater needs than in a primitive society. They
therefore feel deprived, even if their standard of living is better
than in a primitive society. Hegelians are surely right that
poverty can sometimes be relative. In modern affluent society,
poverty is not as much starving as not being able to keep up with
the Joneses. The answer must then be the rather Hegelian one that
people must come to understand that they cannot expect the Joneses
to slow down; they have to run faster themselves. Or perhaps they
should choose
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8 REASON PAPERS NO. 11
another competition where they will b e be t ter than the
Joneses. I t i s a misunderstanding, moreover, that the only
contest in modern society is the competition for pecuniary rewards.
Modern society is pluralistic, there are many games going on
simultaneously. Scholars, scientists, athletes, and artists,
although usually welcom- ing pecuniary rewards, are not pursuing
their careers only in order to obtain such rewards.
Again, Hegelians may offer some responses. They may point out
that a transfer of resources from the Norwegian taxpayers to the
fisherfolk is perhaps not a question of one community losing and
another gaining. The Norwegian taxpayers do not constitute a com-
munity as such; they do not perceive themselves in any meaningful
sense as the community of taxpayers; self-awareness is to some ex-
tent, communitarians can argue, a necessary condition of a com-
munity. The rejoinder to this argument must, I submit, focus on the
relationship between a fisherman and another Norwegian within the
Norwegian community. The real and independent community in this
example is Norway itself. In it, all citizens are supposed to be
equal. Yet, some are subsidized at the expense of others. Is this
not a viola- tion of the communitarian principle that there must be
some kind of consensus behind political decisions? The whole idea
of community seems to lose its attractiveness if the community is
not self- sufficient or autonomous in some sense. If a part of the
population becomes dependent upon another part of it for its
livelihood, it soon loses its independence of mind, its
self-esteem, its moral autonomy. Is the spirit of the pauper really
worth conserving?
Moreover, the Hegelian argument may, if followed through, have
some perverse consequences. If the "legitimate" expectations of
communities are dependent, not on their absolute but their
relative, standard of living, then it seems that those in the very
affluent com- munity in Beverly Hills in California are as
justified in claiming sub- sidies to maintain their (relative)
standard of living as the fisherfolk in Norway or the British
miners. If they suffer a loss because the de- mand for their
services has fallen relative to the demand for other services, for
example because films have been superseded by other forms of
entertainment, then they are apparently, on at least some
communitarian principles, entitled to have enough resources
transferred to them from others to enable them to live their usual
lives.15
In The Constitution of Liberty, Hayek focuses on the moral ar-
bitrariness of our membership of a community; we are usually
members by chance, not choice. The demand of subsidies to com-
munities, Hayek says,
is in curious conflict with the desire to base distribution on
personal merit. There is clearly no merit in being born into a
particular com- munity, and no argument of justice can be based on
the accident of a
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COMMUNITY WITHOUT COERCION 9
particular individual's being born in one place rather than
another. A relatively wealthy community in fact regularly confers
advantages on its poorest members unknown to those born in poor
com- munities. . . .There is no obvious reason why the joint effort
of the members of any group to ensure the maintenance of law and
order and to organize the provision of certain services should give
the members a claim to a particular share in the wealth of this
group.I6
On an economic level, the response to the Hegelian critique is
that in all systems, always and anywhere, some expectations will be
disappointed. And it is necessary that they are. In all economic
systems there has to be a process in which people take on the tasks
for which they are deemed qualified. In all systems those who make
mistakes have to be made to realize this in themselves; otherwise
they will not be able to correct their mistakes. Under socialism or
in- terventionism everybody is supposedly assigned to that station
in life where he can best realize his capacities. But the rulers
may make mistakes as well as others, and the ruled may want to do
something that has not been assigned to them. Under capitalism, on
the other hand, nobody is directly assigned to any one station in
life; it is left to each individual to decide and then get feedback
from society in the form of a market price. If a person is a
miner's son in Wales, then he chooses whether or not to become a
miner himself in the light of the information available to him. If
he is a fisherman in Norway, the same applies. The feedback may be
positive; it may also be negative. What is essential, however, is
that there should be some feedback, because otherwise individuals
obtain no information about their performance.
AN INTERPRETATION OF ECONOMIC HISTORY
The main point is this: if you make a choice, you also have to
understand and accept the fact that others make choices. And the
real question is the following: which is, on balance, a better
alter- native in Hegelian terms, that is to say, less likely to
create aliena- tion; to have your station in life chosen by others
in a direct manner, or to choose it yourself, thereby having to
accept the similar choices of others? There is little doubt that
the second alternative is less likely to create estrangement.
An aspect of the problem has, however, rather been bypassed than
solved by these considerations. The problem is not that some
unfulfilled expectations are illegitimate, but that some people
will feel that their unfulfilled expectations are legitimate and
turn against the free market. The problem can be put in different
terms. Much more information is available to many people about
their
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10 REASON PAPERS NO. 11
possible losses than their gains in the market game, and hence
this game will in their eyes come to lack legitimacy. People who
are ex- periencing a diminished demand for their services know what
they are losing, but they do not know what they may be gaining (for
ex- ample by rapidly adapting). They are not aware of the
opportunities provided by the market. The process will appear
unintelligible; the market forces will seem external. This can
surely explain much of modern economic history. Those who perceive
themselves to be on the losing side in the market game, for example
farmers, and some big companies, have combined to try to ensure
their relative secu- rity from competition by legislation or other
political means. Then, one intervention has made another necessary,
a vicious circle has developed, and an invisible hand has led
people to create an ever- increasing state. This process is, in a
sense, made intelligible by Hegelian arguments. The demand by
interest groups for govern- ment intervention has been an
inevitable, although perhaps mis- conceived, reaction to the
vicissitudes of market forces, simply because people have a better
sense of such vicissitudes than of the benefits conferred upon them
by those same market forces. Hegel's inner dialectic of civil
society call be interpreted not as an apology for the welfare state
but as the dialectic of excessive expectations or, in other words,
as an explanation for the transformation of the liberal order into
a welfare state.
What is to be done? Hegel's own dilemma was that he wanted at
the same time to retain civil society and to reform it. He
recognized that on the one hand, the "particularity" of civil
society implied freedom, variety, and individuality. On the other
hand, he thought that it implied the alienation of those who where
deprived by civil society of the fulfillment of needs which civil
society had generated in them. This seems to be an argument for the
modern welfare state, where market forces are allowed to operate,
but where government "corrects" their operation by intervention.
And indeed Hegel wrote:
When the masses begin to decline into poverty, (a) the burden of
main- taining them at their ordinary standard of living might be
directly laid on the wealthier classes, or they might receive the
means of livelihood directly from other public sources of wealth
(e.g. from the en- dowments of rich hospitals, monasteries, and
other foundations).17
But Hegel was acutely aware that such a welfare state might in
fact create as well as solve problems. It might be true that civil
society caused the alienation of those who were not chosen by the
market,
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COMMUNITY WITHOUT COERCION 11
bu t charity, whether voluntary o r involuntary, also caused
aliena- tion. As Hegel said:
In either case, however, the needy would receive subsistence
directly, not by means of their work, and this would violate the
principle of civil society and the feeling of individual
independence and self-respect in its individual members.
Another solution, almost Keynesian, was the creation of jobs
through public works. "As an alternative, they might be given sub-
sistence indirectly through being given work." But there was a
problem about that, Hegel thought:
In this event the volume of production would be increased, but
the evil consists precisely in an excess of production and in the
lack of a pro- portionate number of consumers who are themselves
also producers, and thus it is simply intensified by both of the
methods (a) and (b) by which it is sought to alleviate it.18
Civil society could not ensure the consumption of its production
as it tended, according to Hegel, to overproduction. Hegel also
men- tioned that civil society might tend to extend its boundaries
to what is nowadays called the "underdeveloped nations." But such
kind of "imperialism" was only, of course, a temporary
solution.
It seems, then, that Hegel was unable to come up with a solution
to modern poverty, which, in turn, led people not to identify with
the community within his own system. But a few comments are in
order. In the first place, Hegel's belief that markets do not
clear, his denial of Say's Law, is highly contr~versial.~g The
concept of price is curiously absent from his analysis. Everything
in the marketplace is a matter of degree. If people are willing to
lower their price, they will be accepted. In other words, there is
no such thing as overpro- duction (or, in this particular context,
oversupply of labor). There is only production at a price other
people are not willing to pay. There is also occasional
discoordination in the economy that is ascribed by the Austrian
economists to a lack of information about available op-
portunities. Even if the price of a good is lowered, potential
buyers may not be aware of it. The task of the state should then,
if we ac- cept Hegel's premise, be to try to eliminate rigidities
in the labor market and other markets and the distortion of
information, and this it can only, according to Hayek and other
Austrian economists, ac- complish by allowing the market forces
freely to operate.
In the second place, the money spent by government on public
works would alternatively be spent by profit-seeking individuals.
Non-Keynesian economic theory, perhaps more widely accepted to- day
than during the last few decades, tells us that such profit-
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12 REASON PAPERS NO. 11
seeking individuals are more likely to find opportunities for
growth and hence for the creation of jobs than government
officials. This is not primarily because they have a greater
incentive, although that is certainly true, but mainly because they
operate under a more effi- cient feedback system where mistakes are
costly and eventually lead to the elimination through bankruptcy of
those who persist in making them.
Thirdly, and most importantly, while a permanent rabble of
paupers is created by charity, as Hegel saw, those who are rejected
by the market are only rejected so long as they try to exact a
price for their services deemed unreasonable by the rest of
society. As soon as they lower their price, or alternatively
improve their serv- ices, they are accepted again by the market. On
balance, a Hegelian should prefer bankruptcies of a few
businessmen, and the tem- porary hardship of those hit by market
forces, to permanent pockets of poverty as in the slums in the
Bronx and in some of the Merseyside communities where individuals
may lose all sense of responsibility and do nothing but collect
their weekly checks from g o ~ e r n m e n t . ~ ~ The important
thing here is that the market is an ad- justment process: it allows
those who make mistakes to correct them; hence, it gradually
eliminates alienation. Our conclusion is, then, that Hegel's
economics are deeply flawed, at least from a Hayekian point of view
and that the poverty problem can be solved within civil society,
although a few poor people will always be with US.
Let us, however, turn to an interesting idea that Hegel
entertained about at least a partial solution to the problem. It
was by individual membership in social classes, (or estates, as
Hegel called them) and corporations. By such a membership the
individual could gain social identity, begin to feel at home in the
world. Such classes and cor- porations, given freedom of entry and
exit, may not be very dif- ferent from the autonomous associations
described by Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America or the
competing utopias described by Nozick in the last part of Anarchy,
State and Utopia. By such a membership the individual could enjoy
security from losses in the market (and, of course, forsake some
gains). This Hegelian idea seems to be implemented to some extent
in Japan where workers and management in big corporations form what
can almost be described as an organic unity. It seems also to be
manifest in some workers' cooperatives (like the Israeli kibbutz).
Private in- surance companies, autonomous associations, and
families also fulfill some such functions. (Secret societies, such
as the Freemasons, are supposed also to be informal insurance
companies of some kind.)
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COMMUNITY WITHOTJT COERCION 13
We realize, then, with Tocqueville, that within civil society
there may be means of overcoming the possible alienation and
insecurity resulting from the workings of civil society. This is
well understood by a left-wing Hegelian, Charles Taylor, who writes
that Tocque- ville "saw the immense importance to a democratic
polity of vigorous constituent communities in a decentralized
structure of power, while at the same time the pull of equality
tended to take modern society towards uniformity, and perhaps also
submission under an omnipotent government." Taylor adds that the
con- vergence between Tocqueville and Hegel on this score "is
perhaps not all that surprising in two thinkers who were deeply
influenced by Montesqu ie~ . "~~
Of course man is not only a homo economicus; he is also a zoon
politikon. People are socially interdependent; they are indebted to
one another. Needs, preferences, expectations, and wants are so-
cially generated. But liberals part company with communitarian
Hegelians, whether conservatives or socialists, when the latter try
to impose communitarian values on individuals who do not want to
step out of their social roles, to ma'ke an exit from their com-
munities, and who are not harming anyone by doing so. From the
communitarian premises it does not follow that government in-
tervention is necessary or that the artificial creation or
maintenance of communities which are no longer viable on their own
are n'ecessary. To borrow a phrase from Joseph Schumpeter: we do
not need communitarianism in an oxygen tent.
It is an open question whether there are any alternatives to the
possible alienation in civil society that are not worse than it. It
is surely a shortcoming of some of the communitarian theories about
alienation and self-expression through participation, that they do
not include a viable model of politics. There, I suggest, com-
munitarian conservatives might learn something from the neo-
Hobbesian analysis of politics, pursued by the Virginia School
(Public Choice) in economics.22 What is emphasized by this school
of thought is that man does not change his nature by moving from a
market setting to a nonmarket setting. Much follows from this ap-
parently trivial point. It is difficult to see, for example, why we
should not expect selfish behavior from bureaucrats, if we expect
it from managers of private enterprises. (And if we are allowed to
postulate moral constraints in nonmarket settings, why should we
not also postulate them in market settings?) Recent experience of
public enterprises, labor unions, and the bureaucracy does not sug-
gest that we can be as optimistic about their public-spiritedness
as some Hegelian conservatives may be.
Liberals have won the argument from efficiency. Therefore, we
have to prepare for another kind of argument: the argument from
identity; the argument not about what we have but what we are. In
this paper, I have dealt with one or two such arguments. I am aware
that I have barely scratched the surface of deep problems which
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14 REASON PAPERS NO. 11
troubled thinkers like Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson, and Hegel. I
also know that there are many strong arguments, besides those of-
fered here, which classical liberals can employ. But let me by way
of summing up say this: Surely we need community. Of course the
market has to be grounded in a specific morality, perhaps best ap-
proached in the familiar maxim: Honest vivere, neminem laedere,
suum cuique tribuere, that is, To live honorably, to harm no one,
to allow each their own. But our community has to be a community
without coercion, as Tocqueville emphasized. Our morality must be
voluntarily chosen or accepted by individuals, not imposed on them.
My contention is that the liberal order has the means to cope with
problems generated be market forces, and that government is not the
solution, but the problem.
1. Hegel's concept of civil society is much more complex and
comprehensive than I make it out to be here. 2. Hegel's Philosophy
of Right, trans. T.M. Knox (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1942), p. 243.
Raymond Plant, "Hegel on Identity and Legitimation," in T h e State
and Civil Society: Studies i n Hegel's Political Philosophy, ed.
Z.A. Pelczynski (Cambridge: Cam- bridge University Press, 1984)
points out that these themes are discussed at some length in
Hegel's Jenenser Realphilosophie (pp. 229-230). 3. Hegel's
Philosophy of Right, p. 244. 4. Ibid., p. 246. 5. Michael
Oakeshott, "The Character of a Modern European State," in O n Human
Conduct (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), p. 305. See also Raymond
Plant, "Hegel on Identity and Legitimation," in Pelczynski, T h e
State and Civil Society, p. 232. Society, p. 232. 6. Hegel's
Philosophy of Right, p. 230: "But the right actually present in the
particular requires. . .that the securing of every single person's
livelihood and welfare be treated and actualized as a right, i.e.,
that a particular welfare as such be so treated." See Z.A.
Pelczynski, "The Hegelian Conception of the State," in ed. Z.A.
Pelczynski, Hegel's Political Philosophy: Problems and Perspectives
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), p. 9: "The highest
type of freedom-freedom in the ethical sphere-is the guidance of
one's actions by the living, actual principles of one's com-
munity, clearly understood and deliberately accepted, and in secure
confidence that other community members will act in the same way."
The problem is, as Hegel saw clearly, that in the marketplace we
can never rest in "secure confidence" about other people's
behavior. 7. Roger Scruton, T h e Meaningof Conservatism (London:
Macmillan, 1984), p. 96: "A citizen's allegiance requires fixed
expectations, a settled idea of his own and others' material
status, and a sense that he is not the victim of uncontrollable
forces that might at any moment plunge him into destitution or
raise him to incomprehensible wealth." Also, Sir Ian Gilmour,
Britain Can Work (Oxford: Martin Robertson, 1982), pp. 224-25: "A
free state will not survive unless its people feel loyalty to i t .
. . .In the Conservative view, therefore, economic liberalism, .?i
la Professor Hayek, because of it starkness and its failure to
create a sense of community, is not a safeguard of political
freedom but a threat to it." And Irving Kristol, "Capitalism,
Socialism, and Nihilism," in T h e Portable Conservative Reader,
ed. Russell Kirk (Harmondsworth, Eng.: Penguin Books, 1982), p.
629. 8. Plant, "Hegel on Identity and Legitimation," and Charles
Taylor, Hegel and Modern Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1979), pp. 112-13.
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COMMUNITY WITHOUT COERCION
9. Friedrich Hayek, ed., Capitalism and the Historians (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1954), with an Introduction by Hayek
and contributions by T.S. Ashton, Louis Hacker, W.H. Hutt, and
Bertrand de Jouvenel. 10. Ibid., p. 14. 11. Max Hartwell, "The
Consequences of the Industrial Revolution in England for the Poor,"
in The Long Debate on Poverty (London: Institute of Economic
Affairs, 1972). 12. Hayek, Capitalism and the Historians, p. 18.
13. Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia (Oxford: Basil
Blackwell, 1974), p. 269. 14. Ibid., pp. 239-46. 15. I am indebted
to Stephen Macedo for this example. 16. Friedrich Hayek, The
Constitution of Liberty (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1960),
pp. 100-101. 17. Hegel's Philosophy of Right, p. 245. 18. Ibid. 19.
W.H. Hutt, The Theory ofIdle Resources (Indianapolis: Liberty
Press, 1975). And Hayek pointed out in The Pure Theory of Capital
(London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1941), that Keynes's theory
implied the denial of the law of scarcity. 20. See, for example,
The Moral Hazard of Social Benefits, by Hermione Parker (Lon- don:
Institute of Economic Affairs, 1982). There have been numerous
studies in America of the detrimental effects which welfare
benefits have, for example, in breaking up the family (by making it
more profitable for teenage girls to be able to register as single
mothers than as married). This is what elementary economic analysis
would have enabled us to predict. 21. Taylor, Hegel and Modern
Society, p. 118. Also Z.A.Pelczynski, "Hegel's Political
Philosophy: Its Relevance Today," in Pelczynski, Hegel's Political
Philosophy, pp. 240-241: "Tocqueville was under the strong
influence of Montesquieu. But so was Hegel, and this is one reason
why he shares with Tocqueville the fundamental belief that the
spiritual-that is, moral, intellectual, religious, and
cultural-forces operating in a society profoundly affect its
political life." 22. Gordon Tullock, The Vote Motive (London:
Iristitute of Economic Affairs, 1976), and William Niskanen,
Bureaucracy: Semant or Master? (London: Institute of Economic
Affairs, 1973). The theoretical foundations of this approach are
laid in James M. Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, The Calculus of
Consent, 2d ed. (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press,
1965).